The Annenberg Election Survey released data today that suggest Kerry's ads in the battleground states are having the desired effect of improving public impressions of Kerry in those states. In the May 3-16 period, Kerry's favorability rating in the battleground states was 39 favorable/33 unfavorable. In the May 17-23 period, his rating improved to 44/32. As for Bush, his favorability rating in these states has declined from 48/38 to 44/44.

Other recently-released swing states data are also positive for Kerry. Yesterday, I mentioned the Gallup data which showed Kerry ahead by 5 in the "purple states" (the 16 states where the 2000 winning margin was less than 6 points; note that Annenberg's "battleground states" include all 20 states where the Bush and Kerry campaigns have been running TV advertisements--that means, in addition to the purple 16, Annenberg includes CO, DE, LA and WV). And Zogby has recently released a group of 16 "battleground state" polls(here, battleground states are the same as Gallup's purple states, with the exception of WV being substituted for ME), conducted May 18-23 for WSJ.com. These polls show Kerry ahead in 12 of these 16 battleground states: FL, MI, MN, MO, NV, NH, NM, OH, OR, PA, WA and WI. Bush is only ahead in four: AR, IA, TN and WV.

Note that all these polls included Nader in the trial heat mix, so these results are particularly bad news for the Bush campaign. Note also, that where Kerry leads in 2000 blue states, his leads are all outside the margin of error. In addition, his leads in the 2000 red states of Ohio (+5) and New Hampshire (+10) are also outside the margin of error.

One caveat: the Zogby polls were conducted over the internet with "respondents who agreed to take part. Likely voters from each state followed instructions sent by e-mail that led them to the survey located on Zogby's secure servers in Utica, N.Y". Well, this isn't like an internet "poll" where anyone who wants to can participate, but one still wonders whether this kind of polling might be biased in ways that would throw off the results. I don't know that for sure, but it's a caution that's worth keeping in mind.